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A communication barrier can cause you to act in strange ways. Ergo, how you yell at someone who does not speak English. As if the increased intensity of your voice will somehow carry with it the rudimentary principles of the language. It can also cause you to think lesser of your listener, consequently resulting in the need to provide misinformation to the simplest of questions.
Months back, I was enjoying a meal at Chef Lee's. I felt daring and ordered the pu pu platter. The presentation was amazing. The appetizers were broke into sections that flanked a miniature grill that burned white/blue with a mystery accelerant. I pointed at the grill and asked the waiter "What's that?" He held his arm out, locked at the elbow and then pushed slightly right to left. Then, in a monotonous tone, he responded "It flame!" and walked off. I was still very concerned with the reason for flame. Was my food not cooked? Were the spare ribs still rare? I couldn't ask the waiter again. Every time he came by, he made very clear that he had no desire to speak to someone who had never seen flame before.
I soon determined that I had to find a way to regain my pride(other than writing a story about a waiter on the internet). I noticed a painting on the back wall that had a bit of Japanese writing adorning it. Now, I'm not saying it looked Japanese. I am saying that I took 2 years of Japanese in High School and should be able to recognize Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji. Knowing already what most of it said, I called the waiter over and pointed to the painting and asked "What does that say?" He looked back at the painting and then back at me and then again at the painting. His answer "Ancient Chinese writing. No one here can translate."
So I didn't know what flame was, at least be honest with me when I ask you a question. Tell me you're Korean, the food is Cantonese, the painting is Japanese and the flame is ancient Chinese secret.
Over the years I have accumulated a wide and varied array of acquaintances. Of those acquaintances, those that I consider friends are the most fortunate. I hold them in high regards and have the utmost respect for them. I am of the opinion that their well-being should be placed far before my own. There have only been a few instances where I have considered reevaluating this belief.
The incident that rings out most in my mind involves my good friend, George. After a night of drinking, it was decided that a midnight meal was in order. Being that it was midnight, fine dining was eliminated from the list of choices. The only remaining option was grease soaked treats that could loosely be described as edible. We amassed a bandwagon of equally drunk and hungry associates and set course for Gabby's. George filled his small Honda Accord with female companions and assumed pole position.
No more than five minutes in to our journey, George pulls rank and maneuvers the cavalcade in to a parking lot. It was time for a debriefing. With the power rushing to his head, George drunkenly commanded to his listeners "Don't drive fitty!" Deciding not to question his authority, I kept to myself that we could, in fact, not drive "fitty" as long as he did not drive "fitty". A few of our inebriated allies took this opportunity to stretch after the long and arduous journey. After much cavorting in the deserted parking lot, we decided it was time to resume our mission. After much contemplation, we remembered what our given mission was.
Like the sheep that we were, we lined up behind our self-proclaimed shepherd and waited to be led to our destination. George, always looking to save time, perceived that the exit to the parking lot was much too far away and that the grassy slope directly in front of him was the closest and more sensible egress. Without consulting his owner's manual to check if the Accord had the appropriate ground clearance, he flew forward and then almost immediately wedged himself in to the drainage ditch that had laid in wait for him at the bottom of the hill.
Again, this cessation of our progress was taken as a moment to drunkenly mingle. We examined the problem from afar and overengineered the Accord's escape in every possible manner. Luckily, as we were plotting to ram the car from behind, a full size pick up drove by and offered a helping hand. With a quick yank, the Accord was set free. Unfortunately, freedom was about to be the only thing on all of our minds.
As we celebrated and praised our new found truck friend, a uniformed officer emerged from the shadows. I quickly went over with George that I was driving and the poorly lit parking lot had no actual exit sign or curb to discourage from use of the hill as an exit. The story was so simple, it had to work. The cop kept his distance and barked at us from across the parking lot. I assumed rank from George and walked over to explain our situation. Not even three words in, the friendly officer wanted to know what I had on my persons. I emptied my pockets on to the hood of his cruiser. A pack of smokes, a lighter, car keys, cell phone and my wallet. He opened the pack of cigarettes and took a whiff. "You been smoking marijuana tonight?" "No, sir(I would later regret showing him even this, the smallest modicum of respect)."
"Tell me again, what happened." I went over the story again, to the letter. Not a single detail was changed. I repeated it verbatim. "That's not what you said before." "No. I'm pretty sure it is. Maybe, it just isn't what you want to hear?" My inner smart ass wanted to make an appearance, apparently. "I'm going to give you a breathalyzer now." "Good!" We walked around to the back of his cruiser for testing purposes. "Blow." Well, not knowing the requirements, I give it a puff. "NO! Blow until it whistles and don't stop until I tell you to stop." Given those directions, I had no choice. I blew. The whistle deafened those on the other end of the parking lot. I could tell by his grimace that he was not enjoying this. He pulled the breathalyzer away. And I continued exhaling. "You can stop now."
The results came back, shockingly, 0.00. He went back to the idea that I had been smoking marijuana. We stepped back around to the front of his cruiser where I assumed the position. Palms down on the face of his cruiser, legs spread shoulder width. "I'm going to pat you down now." "Ok. But everything I had is on your hood." He began his pat down. Judo chopping the side of my calves. Sticking his fingers down in to my shoes as if he had dropped a penny down there and was hoping to get it back. He began fishing around in my back pockets as if they were his own. And then, without warning, he performed a move that I usually charge for. A reach around. He brought his hand around my waist and grabbed onto my "accoutrements." "What's this?" "That would be mine." "Your what? Is it a weapon?!" I explained to him what it actually was and I think it upset him a little when he realized what he was grabbing.
At this point, our patrolman was getting quite fed up with the situation. To be honest, I couldn't blame him. If I had just grabbed some guy's organ, I would want to leave the area as soon as possible. He asked who the car belonged to. "George. He's over there in the red hat." "Well, get him over here." "GEORGE!" "No. Walk over there and get him." I made the march across the parking lot and retrieved George. We went over the story one more time on the way over.
"So, what happened?" It was at that moment, I realized that George had completely forgotten every bit of our rigorous rehearsals. "I've been drinking and I drove into a ditch." The cop was fuming mad. He ordered us to "just leave." I gathered my items from the hood of his car and thanked him for the wonderful evening. George and I wandered back over to the other members of our congregation where I went in to great detail as to what happened.
George offered his apologies and said he owed me a favor. "Thanks, but no thanks. The cop covered the 'favors' for the night."
The truest adage ever spoken is that "nothing in life is free." There will always be ill effects and consequences. This holds most true for first year warranties on appliances and equipment. Whether you are out of service for the time you have to send the item off for, or if you have to open your door to an eccentric repairman, you will be inconvenienced.
At the office, we had a Dell laptop that developed a form of screen leprosy. Given the choice of replacing it and possibly spreading the disease to other monitors in the office or having the agent call in their warranty, I went with the latter. It is an easy operation, but one that can easily become cumbersome if you have banana-hands. As a preface, I am not your standard computer nerd. My work on computers does not extend too far past my job. I do not spend free time playing games or reading on what processor is better at running a game. I don't care what you have in your computer and could care less about your next plans for it. I shower regularly and even wear deodorant. I could very much be considered the antithesis of the stereotypical computer nerd. The service technician that Dell sent out, on the other hand, fit the description on all counts.
I pointed him in the direction of the agent's laptop and falsely believed that would be the end of our encounter. I made my way back to my office to see what my next endeavor was to be. Waiting at my door was another agent whose laptop I had pronounced "dead" some weeks ago. His hard drive would sporadically spin up and he didn't feel like purchasing a new drive, hence "dead". He wanted to know if I would be offended if he had the Dell Dude take a look at it. There is no way I could take offense to this. If by some means, he could get the hard drive spinning again, it could be a chance to learn something new.
Our idiosyncratic tech had just finished up with the screen replacement, so I informed him of the other problem. He said he would check it out for "gas money." I pointed him to the other laptop and went to double check his work. It wasn't that I was scared for my position, it was just that the way he carried himself made me worry about his work ethic. Dell had apparently made it possible for anyone to replace the screen, so long as they knew how to operate a screwdriver and plug a one-way wire in. Everything looked secure and properly tightened. The agent whom the laptop belonged to, did not seem too impressed with tech's people skills; as I would soon find out.
Being a complete glutton for punishment, I went to check up on the tech. I asked if he needed any tools, be it physical tools or software tools. Why do I have to be the nice guy? He requested a windows 98 boot floppy. Without wanting to explain how this wouldn't help him, I simply handed him a bootCD. The system booted up to a diagnostic prompt. It was as if I had brought him out of the dark ages and shown him the miracle of the light switch. Giving him the basics of the commands, I turned to walk off. He stopped me and asked me if I ran any *Nix machines. "No. Never had a reason to." To which he responded, as if he didn't even hear my response "Yeah. I love *Nix. I hate Microsoft." "Ok. I really don't care." I tried to walk off again when I was asked what I ran in my home system. "It's a Gibson(Watch Hackers, you'll laugh at that)." I wish I would have learned from the last exchange that he was pre-programmed with a list of responses that he would rattle off, regardless of the answer I gave. "I've got this awesome..." And he droned on. I took this time to attempt and burn holes through him with my mind. My efforts were fraught with failure. But believe me, I tried.
Finally, he paused. He might have asked a question, but that would have required me to have been paying attention. I took his silence as "I'm done tormenting you" and returned to my office. I entertained the thought that none of that had actually happened. I was dreaming. I was wrong. He appeared shortly later at my door. He wanted a copy of the bootCD. Notice I did not say "He asked for a copy." Fearing that was the only way to get him to leave, I obliged. I started the copy process and prayed I would get called away on a task, any task.
This was the slowest my computer had ever run! He began an onslaught of inquiries. "Do you play legacy?" Figuring that was the latest hot video game craze, I said "No" and left it at that. "You really should. It's like Dungeons and Dragons. Only in real life!" I was confused. Was there a fake life or was he really saying what I think he was saying. "We usually all meet up at this old guy's house in Alabama and play all weekend..." He rattled off some directions that I pretended to write down. At this point, it was better to appease him than to possibly anger him into a frenzy. "You're a pretty tall guy. You could be like an orc. Anyhow, I just got my leather armor." Remember, I am not making any of this up. This is a factual account. "This guy in Phenix City makes the best armor around." My assumptions had been confirmed. I had seen videos of this on the interweb.
Apparently, Legacy is where you take Nerf whiffle ball bats and unmercifully beat your friends for hours at a time. This does sound like fun. But there are rules involved and you must adhere to the story line. You remove those last two items though, and you have my ideal weekend.
The reasoning for his acquiring the leather armor is best said in his own words "Yeah, I could only take like three hits with an enchanted mace." I'm sure a regular mace posed no threat to him, but those of the enchanted variety were something to be cautious of. I checked out the progress on the CD. 15 percent. There was no hope for me. I pretended I was typing an email, when the only thing on my screen was the 'copy cd' dialog box. He didn't buy it. I picked up the phone hoping someone was calling at that very moment. No one. I was trapped.
He went back to his Legacy adventures. He drew out his leather armor on a sheet of scrap paper on my desk and pushed it in front of me, much the way you would push an offer in front of a Japanese businessman that knew no English. And that is exactly how I took it. I stared at it, and nodded. I should have said something. He took my silence as not understanding his vision. He went on to explain the benefits of each design trait he had incorporated. He went on to talk about the two sheaths he had for his two longswords. This next moment, is the very reason this story has been written. This move has become infamous around the halls of my office.
I stared at my monitor, but kept close watch on him with my peripheral vision. "I got two sheaths so I can go like THIS!" With that, he takes his arms and crosses them over and pretends to pull a sword from each side, crossing over in the middle and the same time, hopping in the air to widen his stance and hunker down on his haunches. I was certain my eyes were playing tricks on me, until he offered to demonstrate again. "No. You HAVE to watch. like THIS!!" Sure enough. He did it again. Exactly as I had described.
Unfortunately, there is a huge flaw with this move. I want you to try it at home. Right now. With your right hand pretend to grab a sword on your left hip and vice versa. You don't have to do the hop, unless you want to. Simply unsheathe your imaginary swords and look where your arms cross over. I am really glad they use foam bats and not actual swords, or else Dell guy would have an extremely difficult time typing.
Come to think of it, I kind of wish I would have written the directions down. I could really go for whiffle bat beat down.
Whenever my brother first met her, I told my parents "I hope this doesn't last, because I can't stand her." Well, much to my chagrin, it did last and they got married. I still didn't like her. My brother and now sister-in-law formed an alliance and determined that they should force her love upon me. They organized family night. Thursdays were already written on calendars, but they now carried new weight with me. I was forced to eat dinner with them, immediately followed by board games. The process would usually take 3-4 hours and at the end I felt no closer to the newest member of the family than I did previous to the event.
This went on for months, and at one point the mere echo of her shrill banshee like voice would send me into a rage. It wasn't so much that I didn't like her; it was that I couldn't understand how my own blood could lay down and be abused by her. My brother's stories became her stories, or at least she would finish them. Her savage, spoiled dogs destroyed everything my brother had worked so hard to create at his home. The larger of the two animals chewed through trees, screen doors, window sills and a support beam on the patio. None of this bothered my brother though. He was blinded by his infallible spouse. While my brother was organized and kempt, she was quite the opposite. His stately museum of home had been turned into a heap so disorderly that it disgusted even the most compulsive of packrats. I understand completely that marriage is a compromise, but compromise by the very definition of the word requires concessions by both sides. This was more of a blitzkrieg designed to abolish any and all of my brother's individuality.
At this point, you can see where most of my perturbation came from. It was on one of the designated days for family night, that finally it all met its end. The culmination of months of bitter resentment and agitation came to a climactic explosion. I remained silent during dinner because of the respect I still somehow garner for my brother. Better to say nothing, than to possibly release the flood gates on a former debutante whose manners closely mirror those of a feral child. After dinner, it was time for Scrabble. A game where my abundant vernacular never ceases to fail me. If you are ever playing Scrabble and have the chance to use "pelvis" on a triple word score, I highly recommend it. My tallied score bordered on the quadruple digit boundary, while my opponents struggled hard to break free of the oppressiveness of double digits. I am not a sore winner. I don't choose to dwell on triumphs, especially those as trivial as a Scrabble victory. I was perfectly content with the score keeper, my brother, eyeballing the scores and announcing that I had won. My sister-in-law, on the other hand, suffered from the worst of conniption fits over this. She became enraged and infuriated. She questioned why the results of her sixth grade vocabulary answers were not tabulated. She began yelling at the score keeper, her husband, and soon broke in to a tantrum of embarrassing failure. Her tantrum soon led to a grandiose fit of arm flinging and pouting.
I stomached as much as I could. I sat quiet through her berating of my brother's score keeping ability. I remained restrained during her hurling of scrabble letters on to the floor. I attempted to remain civilized during her heaving of the dictionary, of which contained not a single of the multi-syllabic words she attempted to use during the game. I soon lost it though, as her intended target was hit by the dictionary. The supporting character in this epic, the score keeper, was struck in the forehead with the leather bound lexicon. My refined cultured nature left me, much in the same way the dictionary left her hand. At first, I belittled her with words she could only hope to understand. When her befuddled expression became so pronounced, I decided to lower myself to her level. I raised my voice, hoping that the increased decibels would somehow help to prove my point to her. For the first time since I had met her, she remained silent. If I could have continued yelling forever, I would have. I finished my verbal barrage with two simple words that I am sure she has heard at other situations much like this one. "Attention whore!"
Feeling quite relieved, I excused myself from family night and drove away. A few hours later, I received a phone call from my father. For some unexplainable reason, my sister-in-law had called him so that he could rectify this situation. He wasn't too sure as to why he was calling. Everyone involved in the turmoil could pass the age requirements for an adult, and he could not fathom why one "adult" would call another's father rather than calling the other adult. I explained to him that if they had a problem they could call me and I would more than accommodate them in a solution to the current situation, but that I wasn't going to seek their approval or forgiveness. An hour after the previous call, I received another from our now mediator. Much like her marriage, she believed this could be settled by her way of "compromise". She expected me to concede and apologize for my outburst. She required a card that expressed my sorrow for causing such a troubled condition.
When dealing with me, there are two things you simply can not do. First, you never anger me to the point of yelling. My boiling point is extremely high, but teeters on a fine line between calm and rolling boil. Second, you never give me a chance to be more of a smart ass than I already am. If my complete disdain for my sister-in-law was not outweighed by the esteem I hold for my brother, I would have taken this opportunity to prove the second law. I was going to send a card, with the greeting of "I'm sorry..." and the message of "...I didn't say it sooner."